The Eleventh Year (49 page)

I
t was very late
. In Louveciennes, he had left Lesley sedated, and Jamie and Cassandra finally asleep. Alexandre drove up in his Silver Ghost, the tires screeching as they came to an abrupt halt in front of Elena's apartment building.

She opened to his ring herself, wearing a black satin robe. Her hair was braided and hung over her left shoulder, and her eyes glowed like a panther's in the nighttime. “What do you want?” she asked him, her voice hoarse from cigarettes. They moved into the hallway, but the front door remained ajar.

“What role did you play in this abduction?” he demanded.

Elena shrugged, and the braid moved along with her broad shoulders. “What a stupid question.”

He leaned forward closer to her, and she shrank away. His eyes were narrowed to slits of gray metal. “It isn't so stupid,” he said smoothly. “Because Lesley told me everything about the blackmail scheme. Reeve wouldn't have known to blackmail me through Cassie. He was a newcomer to Paris. He would not have known how important she is to me.”

Elena's body tensed, seeming to pull together. She said nothing. Alex's hand suddenly grabbed her elbow. “You told him,” he whispered, “and you engineered it with him. I have no proof, but I know what I'm saying is the truth!”

“Don't be ridiculous!”

“Don't lie to me! Rumor has it that you and Paul are finished and you need money.”

She regarded him without expression. “There's nothing in what you say but empty words.”

“Maybe so. But you and I know the truth. And I think Paul should know it too. I'm sure he suspects it.”

She sprang forward, her great lithe body bounding out of his grasp. Before he was prepared, she had flung herself at him, her nails clawing his face, her fists beating his chest. He struggled with her and grasped a wrist. He twisted it, and tears came to her eyes. “So,” he murmured. “We have it now.”

They stood glaring at each other, her wrist in his hand.

A voice came from near them, and they both turned, startled. In the doorway Paul now appeared, his face distorted, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his brow wet with perspiration. He said: “I can't believe it, Elena. That you would go so far . . .”

Her nostrils flared once, and her skin, white and taut, made her look like a painted statue in the hallway. “Paul—”

“There's nothing left for you to say to me,” he replied. “My brother said it all.”

Alexandre looked at them both, the woman next to him, who had lost her war, and the man who stood framed in the doorjamb, who was bound to him by blood but for whom he felt nothing anymore. He sighed and pushed past Elena, his steps resounding on the parquet floor. “I'm going home,” he announced without looking at either of them. He pushed past his brother and they heard the car door slam.

Elena continued to stare at Paul, her lips parted, the pulse pounding in her throat. And Paul stared back at her, his features contracted in a mask of disgust, of revulsion, of horror. In his Silver Ghost, Alexandre slipped into his coat and revved up the engine, welcoming the breeze, the sound of a city at night. For human beings were beyond his understanding.

J
amie's villa
in the hills above Cannes was threaded with bougainvillea, their crimson and purple flowers growing like vines over the covered patio and over the sides of the ochre walls, like a patchwork of brilliance. The July sun gleamed, caressing Jamie's skin. She adjusted her hat and continued to trim the roses in the flowerbed in front of the door.

She heard Alex's voice before she saw him, and she faced him, her tanned features opening to him, her eyes bright with pleasure. “You?” she asked.

“Paris was abominable. Poincaré's illness is worse. He's going to resign any day now.”

“And then what?” She wove her arm through his, sat down with him under the covered porch.

“Aristide Briand. But it's the end of an era, Jamie, you know that.”

“What you need is a glass of wine.” She stood up, and he watched her form, going into the large, cool house. She returned with a bottle of white wine that was still frosted from the icebox. A small, dark maid followed her out, carrying a Florentine tray and two glasses. “It's only a little
vin du pays,”
Jamie said, pouring and handing him his glass. “But it's good, and it's cold. Where is your luggage? Are you coming to stay a few days? Maybe a few weeks?”

He looked down, kicked a small pebble. “I can't, Jamie.”

‘‘We're bored here. Zelda and Scott are drinking and fighting all the time. She's become so thin, it's pathetic.…But you haven't come all the way out here to listen to me go on about the Fitzgeralds. It's time, you know, Alex.”

“For what, darling?”

“For you and Lesley to talk. To discuss things.”

He avoided the azure eyes. “Do you think there's anything to discuss?”

“Love doesn't just disappear overnight. It's been fourteen months, Alex.”

“Fourteen months when we've lived without each other.”

They were quiet, and the crickets hummed around them. He sipped his wine. “You never have regrets?” he asked her.

“About Paul? I can't, Alex. He gave me Cassandra. I care about my books. The new one's coming out in the fall. I'm not really alone. If I want a man, there's always one available, isn't there?” She smiled at him, and he was struck by the infinite sadness of her eyes, by their wisdom.

“You don't want to go through life growing older, with the men forever getting younger,” he remarked, taking her hand. “You deserve something better than that.”

“I don't depreciate my life. I'm thirty-two. Somehow, when I imagine myself as an older woman, I see wide-brimmed hats, lively eyes. Success. And maybe young men, and an older man here and there to take me to dinner. But the good ones are all married, or homosexual. I'm not looking for a husband, Alexandre. I never did. I loved two men, and that was enough.”

He didn't answer. “Paul did what he had to do,” she continued. “It's better for me, now that he's gone to London. I don't have to worry about how I'm going to feel if I should run into him at a party. And until Cassie's grown, he won't become an issue in her life. Later she'll want to know her father. If he still feels like it, he can come to see her.”

“One never knows how Paul will react.”

“Do you ever hear from him?”

He could read the wistfulness of her eyes and raised her hand to his lips. He shook his head. “Not directly. Bertrand gets news of him once in a while. He gets along. Men like Paul always get along. There are always people to take care of them.”

“Women?”

He shrugged. “Don't ask me. All I know is that I haven't sent him a
sou.
We were never really brothers. Now it's official.”

“And your mother?”

“She's immortal!” He laughed, and she joined in, shaking her head.

The crickets sang above them, and she asked, in a voice that was suddenly hushed: “And Egorova?”

His lips tightened. “You didn't hear? She's living with Bertrand de la Paume. I never thought it possible: He's such a decent man, and she's such a vulture. To think that when I was little, I hated him.”

“Because he'd loved your mother? Because of Paul?”

“Yes.”

“But it's good to love! Maybe he was the only person who ever really loved Charlotte. You must understand about Elena. She's beautiful, and she's strong, and she's been terribly wounded by life. I think she loved Paul as much as I did. When he left her—after Cassandra—”

“She can't be living with Paul's father out of revenge. Nobody's that vindictive. He's an old man, Jamie!”

“And that's why she's with him. She's thirty-nine. To him she's still young, vibrant. There are those like me who enjoy younger men and then there are the Egorovas. They need men to adore them, or they can't survive. Besides, Bertrand, as you say, is Paul's father. Paul's good side comes from him.”

“She'll have one thing she's always gone after,” he remarked bitterly, accepting another glass of wine. “Because when he dies, he'll leave her money. And then she'll be able to do what she wants.”

“But Paul will never love her again. He won't ever be able to forgive her.”

“And you, Jamie? Why is it that you can forgive so easily? Even Elena?”

She said, staring into her wine: “Not ‘easily.' Not easily at all.…But I just can't see life the way Egorova does: hating and always thinking of vengeance. On Monday you have to think of Monday. You can't be planning Tuesday based on what happened Sunday. That may seem like a simplistic philosophy, but it's the only one that I can abide by.
Today's
important.”

He turned his face to her, in all its grief. She rose, laid a hand on his cheek. “Come,” she whispered. “It's time.”

J
amie left
Alexandre inside the stone living room, in front of the unlit fireplace. The simple wicker furniture was comfortable, like Jamie herself, he thought, sitting down on the soft chintz. There were fresh flowers in the unglazed ceramic vase, and he could smell them, rich and mature. In his chest his heart beat rapidly, and he drank the cool wine. He didn't want to think. He'd come here to find her, of course, and there was no way he could have avoided it. Fourteen months.

After Cassandra's return, she hadn't come back home. She'd sent for her clothes and had moved in with Jamie. And he hadn't opposed this. He'd watched the maids packing her clothes and had known what it was she'd felt: utter, abysmal emptiness. And horrid guilt. There was no way for them to patch things up, not after all they had been through. He hadn't understood, and she hadn't told the truth. It hardly mattered who had been more to blame. In his heart he hadn't forgiven her for having been pregnant by another man and for never having wanted to bear
his
child.

“Hello, Alex,” she murmured, and he stood up quickly. She had let her hair grow again, and it fell to her shoulders, soft and glowing. Bangs still fringed her forehead, above the incredible light-green eyes. She was wearing a peasant dress of simple gingham, of a green and yellow weave, and there were gold loops in her ears. Somehow she reminded him of the girl he'd met, and yet she was different. But who, he wondered, had she really been in those days after the war? It was 1929, and he'd known this woman for eleven years, without ever

knowing her. He had married a scarred child who had felt pain as deep as his. He had wanted balm for his sores, when in fact she'd needed it for her own as well.

“You look fine, Lesley.”

“Thank you. Sea and sunshine become us all. Cassie's grown tall and strong. You'll see her at lunch…if you'll stay. The Fitzgeralds have taken her for a swim.”

“That's nice.”

She fumbled with the corded belt of her dress, then sat down, near the fireplace, in a large armchair. Winged armchairs always made her look so small, he thought, and so vulnerable. “Will you stay?” she repeated.

She had the cool poise of her mother, the cold politeness. He said, “I'll stay if you invite me. I went to the
Colombe d'Or,
in St. Paul-de-Vence, before coming here, just to deposit my bags. I figured that I might take a few days off, relax for a while.”

She nodded silently.

“Lesley,” he asked, “are you happy here?”

She shivered slightly. “Yes. Don't I look it? Jamie and I have always known how to live well together.”

“And you and I haven't?”

Her eyes met his probingly. “What do
you
think?”

“That there was love. That neither one of us was mature enough to know how to handle it—and each other.”

“But that was how it was nonetheless. You can't repair the past, Alex.”

“But one can go forward.”

She stood up, clasped and unclasped her hands, went to the window. He let her silence stay for a minute, then rose and went to her. She felt his presence but didn't move. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Lesley, there is no one else. I've been alone since you left me.”

She looked at him fully. “I'm sorry if I caused you pain. But what else could I do? You thought me immoral. How could we have continued to live as man and wife?”

“That was then. Jamie says I have to learn to forgive. You must too.”

“I'm not the one who has any forgiving to do. You were always immaculate, Alexandre. You never did one thing to hurt me. That woman would never have entered your life if I hadn't been the guilty party, over and over. I realize that. But I can't keep on, forever, blaming myself for what happened. The sins of the past must lie, like old corpses, and be given a decent burial.”

The bitterness of her tone stung him, pierced him to his core. But he kept his hand over her shoulder. “I'm not so ‘immaculate,'” he whispered. “I harmed you by my aloofness, by my own past. I didn't know how to love you properly, because no one had ever loved
me
before. But I was telling Jamie: This is the end of an era. Don't turn me away this time, Lesley. Come back, live with me.”

Her eyes were moist, and he tilted her head upward with his hand. She didn't push him away. “I'm thirty-one,” she murmured. “A little old to begin a family. A little used and threadbare.”

“You're
you,
and I love you.”

She closed her eyes, and he knew that she was trying to blot out all the pain of eleven years, all the mistakes, all the rancor. At Christmas they would have known each other for eleven years. “Do you want to come home?” he asked.

In the palm of his hand, her chin quivered. He bent forward, tasted her lips, pressed his own against them. Her tears were like salt water on his tongue. Suddenly he clasped her in his arms, felt the power of himself with her, holding her against all odds, all people. Her hand moved to his face, her finger touched his nose, passing lightly over his eyelids. “I can't promise you anything,” she said. “Because I don't know anything myself.”

“I don't want a promise. Just you.”

She raised herself on tiptoe, kissed him. Then she leaned against him, breathing quietly. “I'll try,” she whispered,
“
if
you
will.”

In the distance, a church bell started to ring, the sounds breaking on them like waves, perfect in the symmetry of their plaintive cry. But it was not a sound of sadness. It rang through them like an omen, like a good-luck charm. It rang eleven times, for their eleven years.